Weaknesses: Only Contextual To Culture

“What are your strengths & weaknesses?” is a question often used in interviews. Yet, very rarely is it seen in the context of the organization culture & accordingly the suitability of an individual in it.

“I don’t believe in the abstract idea of individual “weaknesses,” only weaknesses in the context of particular corporate cultures. For example, someone who might seem weak or indecisive in an execution-oriented culture might fit right into a highly collaborative culture. What looks like weakness in one culture may be strength in another. It’s much more useful for an interviewer to know what strengths are needed to do the job and to determine if the candidate has those strengths.”

– Priscilla Claman

Read the full article The Worst Interview Question (and How to Answer It) here.

B-Schools & Start-Ups

Nice post at avc.com & a few insights that might be useful to many:

  • Early in a start-up, product decisions should be hunch driven. Later on, product decisions should be data driven.
  • Hunches come from being a power user of the products in your category and from having a long standing obsession about the problem you are solving.
  • Ideas that most people derided as ridiculous have produced the best out comes. Don’t do the obvious thing.
  • If you have an idea that you can’t get out of your head, do a start-up. Otherwise join a start-up.
  • Take risks when you get out of business school. If you don’t take risks, you won’t find yourself in an interesting job and career.

Read the full article at http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/02/mba-tuesday.html.

Customer Experience Resolutions

“Many companies have customer experience efforts underway and it’s time for them to embed customer experience management into the rhythm of their business — making it a fundamental part of how their organizations operate. Here are my 2011 resolutions for companies that have the courage and resolve to get to that next level.”
– Bruce Temkin

Read the full post here.

YES To News, NO To Paper

Newspapers_Jaymi Heimbuch(Photo courtesy Jaymi Heimbuch)

A lifestyle experiment brings in an era of no newspapers at the Shub household.

It first started with my early-to-office routine to beat the dreaded Bangalore traffic. The start was so early, that I missed the arrival of the day’s newspapers on most days. The news reading routine got relegated to the evening. Though I found myself in the dark on some topics over coffee table discussions, I didn’t really miss the newspaper much. 

Another phenomenon that enhanced the disillusionment with newspapers was “commodity journalism”. Non-newsworthy items becoming front page articles. Lack of expertise & perspective in reporting. Internet articles making it to print 2-3 days later. More & more items are worth skipping (amongst the newspapers I read, Mint was an exception).

Finally, the pain of storing old newspapers in a small metro apartment was the clincher. Space & cleanliness issues (roaches love the old paper storage area) were just not worth it. Good riddance. 

So, the beginning of the new year witnessed an astonished newspaper vendor being told to stop the delivery. It is an experiment yet. During this time, we will switch to laptops, iPhone & the Kindle to access our news. Through these channels, news is more current, we get to pick & choose what we want to consume, and maybe save a few trees being felled to print “Page 3” kind of a crap. We sure will miss the weekend routine of reading newspapers over a lazy cuppa. But I am hoping we will get used to the switch. 

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